Ritorno all'ordine e 'ritorno al mestiere': fortuna della tempera e recupero dell'encausto nell'arte italiana tra le due guerre
Author(s)
Vacanti, Salvatore
Date Issued
March 15, 2010
Type
Doctoral Thesis
Abstract
This study examines the “Return to Craft” phenomenon within the wider cultural horizon of the Return to Order of which it represents one of the principal ideological aspects. The success tempera enjoyed at the beginning of the 1920s is analysed through an initial consideration of Giorgio de Chirico’s extensive reflection on the subject in his 1919 essay by the same name, Il ritorno al mestiere (Return to Craft), a theme he developed definitively in his Piccolo trattato di tecnica pittorica (Small treatise on painting technique) in 1928. Additionally, the subsequent transfer of tempera from easel to mural painting, which occurred at the end of the 1920s and the start of the 1930s, is taken into consideration. The growing interest for the ancient painting technique of encaustic, inspired by the recommencement of excavations in Pompei and Ercolano, is also investigated, as well as how this interest gave way to a debate on the subject which dealt with both theory and practical aspects at the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s. In this perspective particular attention is afforded to Corrado Cagli and Ferruccio Ferrazzi’s research and experimentation. The material examined in this study includes written sources, oral testimony and research correlated to the restoration of artworks of a number of key figures from the period between the two World Wars. The study reveals a rather inventive and unphilological approach within the early Twentieth Century’s recuperation of these ancient techniques in relation to the artistic debate going on at the time and to the increasingly dominant Fascist political cultural policy. At the start of the 1920s, an approach that can be defined as “ethical” is common to both Giorgio de Chirico’s recovery of oil tempera emulsion and that of other artists (Felice Casorati, Carlo Levi, Gianfilippo Usellini, Alberto Savinio, Corrado Cagli, Afro Basaldella), insomuch as it was intended as a revival of the purity found in Italian Primitive Art. This recuperation continued until the start of the 1930s and comprehended not only stylistic and formal elements but also technical and operative aspects, in a cultural climate where the historic avant-garde was being surpassed and Art’s values “rebuild”. Focus is put onto how the “Return to Craft” succeeded an initially ideological approach, especially at the beginning of the 1930s with the debate regarding the “resurgence of mural painting” which involved both the use of tempera (which Savinio called “Italian technique”) and encaustic painting, which many erroneously believed to be the technique used for the Pompeian wall paintings. The recuperation of encaustic painting is also examined in relation to the recovery of Roman ideals undertaken by the cultural regime.
Additional information
Dottorato di ricerca in Memoria e materia delle opere d'arte attraverso i processi di produzione, storicizzazione, conservazione, musealizzazione
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